I’m going to offer something a little different in this week’s Outside the Box. Nate Silver has consistently been one of the best political analysts of the past 12 years. I wasn’t terribly enamored of his move from the New York Times to ESPN – to go back to covering sports rather than politics...
Soon after the Paris attacks, I picked up the phone to talk over the situation with my friend George Friedman. George is one of the truly world-class thought leaders on geopolitics. We had an animated 20-minute conversation. I didn’t particularly like what I heard.
Many people have constructed alternative inflation measures to correct what they consider flawed and/or manipulated government statistics. Shadow Stats is a well-known example. Publisher John Williams believes the 1990s introduction of hedonic adjustments...
Yesterday, we learned that lending standards had eased and that there was increased loan demand from institutions and households, per the ECB’s September report. (Which was attributed to the success of QE and...
Decisions, decisions. Many Americans will have to make a big one in the next 60 days or so. How you decide will affect both your health and your wallet. Hospital management and doctors are seeing significant differences in...
There is presently a bull market in complacency. There are very few alarm bells going off anywhere; and frankly, in reaction to my own personal complacency, I have my antenna up for whatever it is I might be missing that...
GDP is far from the rather exact number most people think. There are lots of ways to measure GDP; and recently, what is not measured has been the cause for some controversy, at least among economists who care...
Back in the olden days (pre-2000 or so), information junkies like me relied on printed newspapers, paper magazines, TV newscasts, and snail-mail newsletters. All these channels still exist, but they can’t begin...
A new report from Pew Charitable Trusts that examines debt within each generation finds that as you move down the age ladder, consumers are less likely to view debt in positive terms. This report helps us understand...
The sluggish economic growth here and abroad has spawned three significant developments – falling commodity prices, looming deflation and near-universal currency devaluations against the dollar. With slowing to negative economic...
Like many of you readers, I’m old enough to remember a time when 2.3% annual GDP growth was a disappointment. We always knew America could do better. Not anymore, apparently. Some people actually cheered...
Much of the world is focused on what is happening in Greece and Europe. A lot of people are paying attention to the Middle East and geopolitics. These are significant concerns, for sure; but what has been happening in China...
Prodi and the other leaders who forged the euro knew what they were doing. They knew a crisis would develop, as Milton Friedman and many others had predicted. It is not conceivable that these very astute men didn’t realize...
Almost everyone wants to be more productive. I include myself in that group – there are lots of ways I could be more productive. When I have conversations with people I think are very productive, they almost always tell me...
For the vast majority of investors, portfolio returns are generated by the equity markets or at a minimum heavily influenced by the equity markets. We have enjoyed an almost six-year bull market run in the stock market...
The common meme in today’s world is that we are slowly (or perhaps even rapidly in some instances) destroying our global environment. Not just by way of global warming, but pollution, over-farming, water usage...
I am not sure if my heart was ever that much of an open book, but I like to think I’m still relatively young. Nevertheless, I must admit that sometimes I want to “give in and cry.” This is especially so when I look at...
For the last four years, I have been highlighting the idea that when Beijing floats the renminbi, the currency may go down, not up, which is the exact opposite of what those who accuse China of currency manipulation believe would happen.
It wasn’t that many centuries ago that China was the absolute economic center of the world. That center gravitated to Europe and then towards North America and has now begun moving back to China.
The consensus I’m hearing and reading from the 500+ attendees at the recent Strategic Investment Conference is that this was the best ever. It was certainly intense, with more divergent views presented this year...
